Hello everyone, and welcome back to our weekly positioning watch, which today will start at the growing number of BoJ officials who are now supporting an exit from NIRP possibly already in March, sending Nikkei 225 down >2% in Asia hours yesterday, while China and China-proxies were bid – quite a surprising dynamic in Asian equities, which we won’t rule out to continue over the next weeks, as markets are likely shifting away from Japanese equities if a hike actually comes through. 

Our 250-day prediction from our PCA-tool (the blue line) has also been flagging the rally in Japanese equities, and now see a major divergence in the trend relative to the macro fundamentals, which has left a >2 standard deviations fair value gap, which seems likely to be closed via a retracement lower in Nikkei.

Chart of the week: Our models have been bearish Japan since early 2024